


505

by unthank



Series: our favourite worst nightmare [1]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst, Break Up, Exes with Benefits, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Post 2021 Olympics, Post-Break Up, Post-Time Skip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-18
Updated: 2020-09-18
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:14:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26527315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unthank/pseuds/unthank
Summary: There's fifteen moments where Atsumu tries to forget how to love him; but he knows, he does, that he'd probably still love him with his hands around his neck
Relationships: Miya Atsumu/Sakusa Kiyoomi
Series: our favourite worst nightmare [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1954024
Comments: 38
Kudos: 225





	505

**Author's Note:**

> [when you look at me like that, my darling what did you expect?](https://open.spotify.com/track/0BxE4FqsDD1Ot4YuBXwAPp?si=K_GqbDb0Se-seBo6NrwEiA)
> 
> cw: alcohol consumption, brief or implied sexual content (nothing explicit), mentions of recreational drug use

**i.**

There’d been a time - long ago, before the gods took away what remained of his boyhood - where Atsumu had looked at Kiyoomi and saw a glittering constellation in a sea of ink black night.

But now he sees him, black hair and black eyes, and thinks of nothing more than a seabed trench. The stars can be fathomed by every man lost to the rough sea, but beneath each wave is a cruel pit of unknowing. 

He doesn’t know when he stopped seeing a map to the stars in Kiyoomi’s pitch-deep eyes.

  
  


**ii.**

He’s sitting in the back of a cab just west of Nakano City. Going back to Osaka would be a forty-five minute flight or a seven hour drive - it was an easy decision, no matter how expensive it was.

His brother will tell him off for spending so recklessly, for wasting thousands of yen to avoid a catastrophe of his own making. Atsumu has never been one to think of consequences. He’ll avoid them as best he can. If he can spend seven hours in a strangers car, taking longer to reach the end of the road, then he’ll take it by any means.

There’s lights all around the city and the sky is warm royal blue. Half past nightfall, stuck in the gap after daytime. How aptly appropriate, you think, you know; Atsumu is trapped in the halfway distance between love and exhaustion.

It’s not like he cares, he definitely doesn’t, not anymore, how could he care when there was nothing left to care about? Perhaps when he’s home in the early hours before daybreak, he’ll find someone and bring them home. He hates sleeping alone, after all, and his bed is always empty. 

Nighttime is enough to crush a lonely man.

  
  


**iii.**

In the blue dark night, Atsumu has his hand between his thighs. He’s in bed and his hands are wrapped around desperate heat, touching himself, thinking of abyss eyes, pretty pouting lips and an even baritone saying his name over and _over_ . He’s thinking of another man’s hand on his thigh and holding him in place, telling him how _good_ he is, how _sweet_ he is, only for him - never for anyone else. Atsumu would never give himself to anyone other than him.

He’s waiting for him to come home. It’s a forty-five minute drive and he always takes the shortest routes, Atsumu knows this, he knows Kiyoomi. More than three years in each other’s beds and lips against each other’s whispered love confessions had taught him enough. 

His hands are sticky now and he’s almost close. His legs are shaking and he thinks of his mouth on him, of his teeth and his hand around his throat. And he’s made a mess now, all over the sheets, and he knows Kiyoomi won’t share a bed with filth like this, so he forced himself to stand on jelly legs and make their bed acceptable.

But it's 12:43am and Kiyoomi still isn’t home. Will he be home at all? And Atsumu bites the back of his hand to keep himself from screaming. 

  
  


**iv.**

Somewhere in Sōemonchō, a pretty girl with blunt cut bangs is kissing Atsumu’s neck. He can’t remember her name - Ai or something equally regular - but she smells like expensive perfume and has her fingers in his belt loops in just the way he likes. She’s whispering something to him and he doesn’t know what, he doesn’t care what. Red lights and heavy beating club remixes make his whole body tremble and his head feel like it’s spinning. The alcohol has gone to his head and all he can think of is taking her home.

He has his hands up her shirt in the back of the cab. She’s halfway in his lap by the time they roll into his apartment, her hands reaching for his belt and he just wants this to hurry up. He wants to get on with this and _fuck_ her until neither of them have breath enough to think. 

But there’s Kiyoomi, suddenly, standing in the hallway. He’s wearing those navy blue plaid pyjamas Atsumu got him one year, his hair is clearly damp, and, just like every single other day, Atsumu has no idea what his stone blank expression means. 

The girl in his arms is breathless and her pupils blown out wide as she grinds against his jeans. She’s kissing his neck again, marking him he feels, and she asks him just _who_ that tall silent man was.

“No one,” he replies. “Just my housemate.”

  
  


**v.**

It doesn’t matter how often he says that. 

Ai is often in his bed, in his arms. She likes the taste of cigarette smoke on his lips and leaving red lovebites along his collarbone. He likes her pitch-coal hair and the mole beneath her mouth. (He makes sure to kiss it often, he tells himself it’s a habit, he’s just used to kissing his lovers there. Nothing more, nothing less.)

But it doesn’t matter how much he kisses her, though. She always has questions about him, about Kiyoomi, on the tip of her curious tongue.

“How long were you together?” She asks him one day. He can’t read her expression at all and a lump grows in the depths of his throat.

“Five years,” he says.

And he doesn’t hear from her again.

**vi.**

Atsumu is seventeen when he meets Kiyoomi for the first time. They’re at youth camp, surrounded by people their age and unusually, somehow, of ever so similar persuasions as them. The first time he kisses Kiyoomi is over a plastic bottle, spun by a boy who’d spent a year at an American school and wanted to give them a real American experience; all nearly daring games and boy-kisses never to be spoken of again. Kiyoomi tastes like strawberry lip balm and Atsumu never wants this to stop. If he could, he’d kiss him more, he’d kiss him until neither of them wanted to kiss anyone else.

  
  


**vii.**

He doesn’t remember when it started or when Kiyoomi stopped kissing him with all the tenderness of a man in love with the world. But it’s changed, and he doesn’t think he’ll ever know how or why. A knife twists in his gut at the thought that he fell short of the mark.

He’s in the kitchen with him now. He’s still his boyfriend and he still wants to hand him everything he possibly owns, every artery in his threadbare heart belongs to him. The kitchen lights are barely on, only one still works and they haven’t gotten around to fixing the others; the remaining one keeps flicking and a moth flits inside the plastic light cover. And he feels like there’s a storm brewing between them.

“We need to end this,” Kiyoomi says. 

“We do?” Is all Atsumu can ask.

“What do we have _left_ , Atsumu?”

Atsumu tries not to flinch at the bite in Kiyoomi’s bark. It’s all he can do to turn and leave the mid-lit domesticity behind him, choking on the fifty words and protests taking root in his dry desert throat. Can’t a man run when he’s sure his heart is breaking?

  
  


**vii.**

You don’t know when he stopped loving you. All you know is that you have to try and do the same.

**ix.**

There’s still times where he’s in Atsumu’s bed, his teeth in his neck and his hands down the front of his boxers. He still touches him with every precision of a man well practiced at his craft. He can take Atsumu apart with ease; soft touches to his stomach, teeth scraped along his jaw, every inch of Atsumu is always so sensitive, so devastatingly responsive to Kiyoomi’s touches he can’t help but cry salt tears.

Only once, after the fall, is Kiyoomi not in Atsumu’s bed when they collide into each other once again. It’s hard, you see, it’s near impossible not to be tempted. It’s cheaper to live together than apart - and it’s a good reason, isn’t it, to excuse yourself from fucking the man who cut your heart in half?

Kiyoomi is on the sofa and Atsumu is kneeling in front of him. There’s a volleyball game on the screen behind him, some match between Asas São Paulo and another team Atsumu doesn’t know, doesn’t particularly care to learn about. All he knows is that his ex-boyfriend is in front of him, all black hair and unreadable; but his hands are in Atsumu’s growing-out blonde, tugging him ever so much closer.

He’d always said he preferred it when Atsumu’s mouth was full and when he couldn’t speak. Some days, Atsumu wants to take offence, but he can’t, not right now. Not when Kiyoomi’s filled his throat and he feels, just for a moment, that he could give up his every pretence and worship the man in front of him. Honouring Kiyoomi with his mouth would be just the same as honouring the gods.

And as he hears Shou-kun’s voice on TV, shouting praise in a language Atsumu will never comprehend, he wonders, just briefly, what became of them all.

  
  


**x.**

Some days Atsumu thinks that he should’ve listened to everyone around him. 

He’s lying on the sofa in their cramped twin size apartment. He has the TV on, again, because what else is there to do these off seasons except binge films you’ve seen before and fuck the ex you can’t seem to quit? 

This time he’s watching an American film Tobio-kun’s friend, yet another unreadable boy, had recommended. They’d watched it together when he was last in Tokyo, Kunimi handing Atsumu an imperfect blunt and telling him, between kisses to the corner of his mouth, that he understood the crease between his brows and tired rings beneath his eyes. He’d been distracted then, for one night only, and they’d barely watched the film. But now he’s watching it, and the grime on each actor and the neon lit scenes as it rained on the final character left to die, makes something in Atsumu ache. 

There’s a dove on the screen and it’s flying into the sky, the final character, in something so reminiscent of Atsumu’s high school days, says a line about memories being washed away, just like tears in rain. 

The ache in his gut continues to grow and Atsumu doesn’t want to think about this, he doesn’t want to confront the hollow cavity in his chest. So he shuts the TV off, cutting the film before he can see any conclusion. He doesn’t want it to end. 

He didn’t want any of it to end. 

  
  


**xi.**

Sometimes he thinks of calling someone else and asking them for a place to stay. But he’s stubborn, to a bitter fault, and he always ends up back in Kiyoomi’s bed.

**xii.**

In Kiyoomi’s bed, he almost always has his hands entangled in his hair. (It’s soft, and inky, and curls so deliciously at the back of his neck - he can’t get enough of him and his monochrome beauty.)

For Kiyoomi is a beautiful boy and he’s even more beautiful as they edge towards thirty. Atsumu doesn’t think he’ll be able to kiss anyone else as passionately as he wants to kiss this man. He’s so sure he’s conditioned him; he won’t be able to love anyone other, his first taste of Kiyoomi’s strawberry lips has cost him an addiction he could never rehabilitate from. He wants to believe Kiyoomi did this to him on purpose. He wants to find something he can blame. 

But he wouldn’t take it back, not really, not for the world. But Kiyoomi fucks him like he hates him, like he’s using Atsumu to get rid of every frustration in his god-strong body. But he doesn’t want it to stop, he doesn’t think he can stop.

  
  


**xiii.**

It took a little while but Atsumu stopped going to bars and clubs to find someone else to fuck. He’s stuck now, he thinks, he can’t fuck Kiyoomi out of himself no matter how hard tries, no matter who he invites back home. His bed has become a warzone.

He tries to enjoy the films that Osamu recommends him, with a warning note in his voice and an offer of a spare room in his smaller town apartment. Not that Atsumu would agree. He’s established that. But Osamu offers it every time. And the films his brother recommends are always from Hong Kong and he wonders why everyone tells him to watch films with subtitles, ones he can’t understand without working for it. (Perhaps they’re saying something, you’ll never know, you always choose a man who can’t be read.)

And maybe he’s a little drunk; it’s easier drinking at home than it is surrounded by strangers who want nothing more than to grind against each other in a stark lack of inhibition. 

Kiyoomi wasn’t home tonight, Atsumu didn’t ask where he went. But the front door opens and he goes to greet him, welcome back the man who won’t leave his existence alone. 

“Have fun?” He says, to the silence, to no answer in return.

All he does is step forward, almost trip over his own feet, and he knows he looks like a nightmare. Kiyoomi pulls down his facemask and he watches him, his eyes are deeper than a trench and bleaker than the night, no constellations are left for Atsumu to find. But he kisses him all the same, presses his lips against the other man’s more than once or twice. Kiyoomi doesn’t move, doesn’t kiss him back - he stays so still that he could’ve been carved from the warmest marble. Atsumu’s hands are bunched into fists, gripping Kiyoomi’s jacket so tightly both of them are afraid it’ll rip, but only one of them cares if it does.

“You’re so fucking _cold_ ,” Atsumu rasps. “Is there anything left in you?”

It’s like something in Kiyoomi shatters then and his porcelain exterior cracks. Something more akin to a howl than a sob crashes out of his mouth and his whole body crumples. He's half on the floor, half in Atsumu’s arms, and his tears are enough to make Atsumu himself crumble completely, fall apart entirely. 

Nothing is only about him, he knows that, but he’s selfish. He thought of himself in all his agony and didn’t see Kiyoomi; he thinks that maybe, just possibly, he didn’t want to think that the other man could be made of the same misery he was.

Grief is a thing in many colours and Atsumu’s is ink-black night. And Kiyoomi’s, he thinks, he knows now, is every bit as gold as dawn.

  
  


**xiv.**

He doesn’t remember the last time Kiyoomi had let him lie in the coolness of his arms.

Maybe it’s self destructive to love a man who destroys you, who destroys himself, but Atsumu knows by now he can never stop. He’s built his version of love around a man who greets him with goodbyes.

“You know,” he whispers, to them both, to the late lasting hours of dark. “I’d probably still adore you with your hands around my neck.”

  
  


**xv.**

Atsumu looks at him with every hope of a man who’s lost at sea; he looks at him and sees the first star of night. And in his imagination he sees a man who knows he'll wait and the ghost of a heart-sick smile.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading!
> 
> this is, i suppose, a song fic. on twitter me and some other people began to think about 505 by arctic monkeys as a sakuatsu song, and since it's a breakup song, a breakup fic came out of that. a lot of the plot follows the lyrics, with some of the prose referencing the song. the very end of the song has alex turner singing about imagining seeing his soon-to-be ex girlfriend lying in wait, a smile on her face - which is near enough what atsumu imagines at the very end of this fic.
> 
> breakups are always hard and often they're not satisfying or conclusive, but maybe we'll make sure they're happy in the end.
> 
> some notes:
> 
> 1\. the distance between nakano city and osaka is, on average, a 6 hour drive or a 1 hour flight  
> 2\. sōemonchō is referenced as a popular nightlife district in osaka in many articles, however i've never been to osaka so i can't confirm this  
> 3\. the film kunimi recommended to atsumu is _blade runner_ (1982). films are dearly important to me and i felt that rutger hauer's 'tears in rain' monologue fitted atsumu's emotional state. [you can watch the monologue here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoAzpa1x7jU)
> 
> i hope you enjoyed reading this!
> 
> twitter @[kuguken](https://twitter.com/kuguken)


End file.
